1679 - Giovanni Alfonso Borelli dies (b. 1608). Italian physiologist who was the first to explain muscular movement and other body functions according to the laws of statics and dynamics. ["De motu animalium (Rome, 1680)].

1869 - Henri Matisse was born (d. 1954). French painter and graphic artist. Along with Picasso, Matisse is considered one of the two foremost artists of the modern period. His contribution to 20th-century art is inestimable.

1913 - Seth Carlo Chandler dies (b. 1846). American astronomer best known for his discovery (1884-85) of the Chandler Wobble, a complex movement in the Earth's axis of rotation (now refered to as polar motion) that causes latitude to vary with a period of 14 months.

1916 - The Hampton Terrace Hotel in North Augusta, South Carolina, one of the largest and most luxurious hotels in the USA at the time, burns to the ground.

1971 - US President Richard Nixon signs the National Air Quality Control Act, which calls for a 90% reduction in automobile emissions by 1975. The act also tightened air-pollution controls and fines in other industries.

1988 - Mario Lemieux became the first player in National Hockey League history to score one each of the five types of goals in a single game: an even-strength goal, a power-play goal, a short-handed goal, a penalty shot and an empty-net goal.

1993 - the last research samples of the smallpox virus (variola) were scheduled to be destroyed. Smallpox was the world's most dreaded plagues until 1977, when it was declared eradicated. However, some scientists who wanted to continue research on the virus stopped the destruction plan. The remaining frozen samples are in Moscow.

2000 - Kenneth L. Pike dies (b. 1912). He was a U.S. linguist and anthropologist known for his studies of the aboriginal languages of Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, New Guinea, Java, Ghana, Nigeria, Australia, Nepal, and the Philippines.

MAN GONE DOWN By Michael Thomas. Black Cat/Grove/Atlantic, paper, $14. This first novel explores the fragmented personal histories behind four desperate days in a black writer’s life.

OUT STEALING HORSES By Per Petterson. Translated by Anne Born. Graywolf Press, $22. In this short yet spacious Norwegian novel, an Oslo professional hopes to cure his loneliness with a plunge into solitude.

THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES By Roberto Bolaño. Translated by Natasha Wimmer. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27. A craftily autobiographical novel about a band of literary guerrillas.

THEN WE CAME TO THE END By Joshua Ferris. Little, Brown & Company, $23.99. Layoff notices fly in Ferris’s acidly funny first novel, set in a white-collar office in the wake of the dot-com debacle.

TREE OF SMOKE By Denis Johnson. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27. The author of “Jesus’ Son” offers a soulful novel about the travails of a large cast of characters during the Vietnam War.

1814 - Sir John Bennet Lawes was born (d. 31-Aug-1900), (1st Baronet) English agronomist who founded the artificial fertilizer industry and Rothamsted Experimental Station, the oldest agricultural research station in the world.

1879 - Billy Mitchell was born (d. 1936). American military aviation pioneer.

1882 - Sir Arthur Eddington was born (d. 1944). English astronomer, physicist, and mathematician who did his greatest work in astrophysics, investigating the motion, ternal structure, and evolution of stars.

1882 - William P.S. Earle was born (d. 30 Nov. 1972). American film director.

1888 - Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau was born ( †11 Mar 1931). German fillm producer. After graduating in dramatic arts, he founded the Murnau-Veidt Filmgesellschaft and shot his first film, "Der Knabe in Blau" (“The Blue Boy”). In 1922 he produced "Nosferatu", a film that became one of the most important silent film works.

2000 - U.S. retail giant Montgomery Ward announces it is going out of business after 128 years.

2001 - In Argentina thousands of people flooded banks as the government eased a 5-day bank holiday. Demonstrations ensued and riot police used rubber bullets and tear gas to quell violence at the Government House known as Casa Rosada.

2001 - Pakistan arrested some 50 leading members of 2 Islamic militant groups: Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and Jaish-e-Mahammed.